Chapter 207: The Strange Dream
Tonight was truly joyful.
Zhou Qian’s friends were rough around the edges, but their hearts were warm and genuine.
Although everyone fought fiercely over the braised pork, after slowly finishing off the carp with bones, they became much more polite with the food afterward.
In the end, when they really couldn’t eat any more, they even found some plastic bags to pack up the steamed sweet potatoes and salted peanuts to take home.
Seeing this, Zhou Qian couldn’t help but sigh, “Alright, alright! Just pack it all if you want! Do you want the leftovers and the tomatoes too?”
The potatoes were just too filling, and hardly anyone had touched the stewed yard-long beans with eggplant or the stuffed green peppers!
As soon as he said this, everyone cheered happily:
“Yes! Why don’t we do a night drill later and eat this as a late-night snack when we’re back?”
It wouldn’t spoil by tomorrow morning, but whether they’d still get to eat it then was another question. Everyone patted their full bellies and nodded in agreement.
Better safe than sorry!
The tomatoes were originally meant as fruit before and after the meal, but everyone ate so much they could barely walk straight—where was there room left for tomatoes?
So, someone happily stepped up and quickly stuffed the tomatoes into a bag.
But true to their word, after eating and resting, they efficiently cleaned all the pots, bowls, and pans, and wiped down the tabletops until they sparkled before putting everything back in place.
They even cleaned up all the peanut shells and food scraps in the yard.
Seeing this, Huai Yu was even happier and reluctantly bid them farewell as they left:
“When you’re not on missions, you must come over and play with Brother Zhou Qian again! I’ll cook for you guys.”
“Sure, sure!”
Everyone responded without hesitation.
Before coming, they had thought of Huai Yu as just a little girl.
After coming, they revered her as a divine chef. Even now, their replies were so sincere:
“Next time when we bring offerings, we’ll bring some extra ingredients too—Little Sister Yu, is there anything else you’d like?”
…
Recalling the joy of tonight, Huai Yu couldn’t help but smile as she lay in bed.
The happiness felt so real and lasting that she thought, even if she dreamed of that unlucky Wu Yue again tonight, it wouldn’t be a big deal.
Outside, the moonlight was hazy, and the rose branches swayed gently, their light fragrance wafting through the air.
But in her dream, everything around was desolate.
The ground was dry and yellow, covered with dead wild grass, and stepping on it felt like treading on soft soil.
It was as if everything was buried under layers of ice and snow—cold everywhere. Even the faint warmth underfoot seemed to be fading away.
In the center of this dry, yellow land stood a gnarled brown tree trunk, full of deathly stillness, stretching its sinister branches toward the sky like a monster.
Bits of torn clothing hung faintly from its branches, and there were decayed, gray-white bones on the ground.
In front of the tree, it seemed like a familiar figure was standing there.
Where is this?
Huai Yu’s mind was blank, her heart pounding, as if something was pulling her in.
Looking around, she could clearly see lush greenery in the distance.
But the vast area under her feet was nothing but endless yellow, like a winter pasture ravaged by snowstorms, without a single fresh sprout.
Where is this?
Her heart became anxious, as if she instinctively knew this place was important. Yet the scene before her grew stranger and stranger, and all around, it was as if people were softly whispering:
“So cold…”
“So very cold…”
Instinctively, she ran toward the vague figure ahead.
But at that moment, the dry, yellow ground seemed to open up like a giant mouth. She suddenly lost her footing, her whole body jerking violently as she fell into a deep abyss—and then she woke up.
The loneliness, fear, and cold from the dream still lingered in her, and she couldn’t help but pull the blanket tighter around herself, hugging it hard.
All around was pitch black.
Huai Yu lay there in a daze, faintly catching the familiar scent of flowers.
What was that scene in her dream? It felt so familiar…
But soon, sleepiness swept over her again, and Huai Yu couldn’t resist closing her eyes once more.
In that half-asleep, half-awake state, the scene suddenly shifted again, turning into another dark place.
No, it wasn’t exactly pitch black.
Because it looked like a room, with faint moonlight streaming in through the cracks in the building—just like the moonlight falling into her own room.
After staying in the dream for a while, she seemed to get used to the darkness, and she vaguely saw the outline of a table in the room—
It looked a little familiar.
Huai Yu made a mental note of it, and then suddenly realized—
Wasn’t this Zhou Qian’s room?!
Being this close, what was the point of dreaming about it? Surely she wouldn’t need to run 10 kilometers just to see him in a dream?
Ew!
In the middle of the night, Huai Yu shivered: way too creepy.
…
The next day, she told Zhou Qian about her dream:
“Do you think… I might have some other kind of ability, like foresight or something?”
Zhou Qian thought about it and finally concluded, “I feel like it was probably just a regular dream.”
After all, they thought it over for a long time and couldn’t figure out what clue she was supposed to get from it. Plus—
“What’s so special about my room that you’d need to foresee it?”
“And if you really wanted to see it, you could just visit during the day. No need to go through the trouble of dreaming… You know, it’s like any living room in any house.”
“You were probably just too tired.”
Huai Yu thought about it and still looked a little sad: “But… when I was in the dream at first, I really felt so lonely and miserable.”
Zhou Qian sighed, put down his hoe, and sat with her at the edge of the field:
“Xiao Yu, maybe it really is just ‘what you think about during the day, you dream about at night.’”
“You don’t like being alone in general. And in dreams, all sorts of weird scenes can show up. As for dreaming about my living room… that’s even simpler. Maybe you stared at it a little too much during the day, and it left an impression in your subconscious.”
Huai Yu rested her chin on her hand and looked at him: “Really?”
“Really,” Zhou Qian said firmly. “What could you possibly foresee in my living room anyway?”
Huai Yu thought for a moment: that did seem to make sense.
She sighed, “Ah, I really wish I had some special foresight ability.”
That way, maybe she’d have a chance to find out where Lin Xuefeng was now. Or maybe even meet Uncle Zao’s kids.
She absentmindedly picked up a twig and started drawing on the ground, trying to recreate the strange scene from her dream.
But her drawing skills were really lacking—no matter how vivid the image was in her mind, when she drew it, all that came out was a circle, with a messy tree in the middle that just looked like a big scribble…
No one would be able to tell what the heck it was supposed to be.
But Huai Yu stared at it for a long time, then gently tapped the twig at the center of the circle.
